


Crisis Hotline

by meandminniemcg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Activist Lavender Brown, Crisis Hotline employee Parvati Patil, F/F, Getting Together, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Hogwarts, Singer Lavender Brown, WWN, lycanthropy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 22:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16774411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meandminniemcg/pseuds/meandminniemcg
Summary: Lavender was a singer, an activist - and lonely. Until she called the Wizarding Crisis Hotline.





	Crisis Hotline

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my awesome beta Gemma /potter-loves-malfoy and to the Femslash-Minifest-Mods.

**December 2005**

“Good evening. You’re listening to The Thursday Pensieve on the WWN. Tonight, we have a guest who recently moved back to Britain after spending the last seven years in Rome. She is famous for her songs that help give people all over the Wizarding World, dealing with trauma, strength. And only last summer did she find the happiness that she had lost the day of the Battle of Hogwarts. Welcome to my show, Lavender Brown,” Lee’s voice was smooth and calming.

Lavender usually didn’t like to be interviewed––despite what she might’ve thought in her Hogwarts years––but it was one of the necessities of her job. Besides, Lee was one of the three most trustworthy journalists in Wizarding Britain, so if Lavender was going to trust anyone to do the interview, it was Lee.

“If you have questions for Lavender, now is the time to get your spellphones, the number is 548932,” Lee addressed his audience before turning to Lavender. “Lavender, your newest album strays significantly from topics in your older songs. With your most recent album, you’ve started singing about love, we’d never heard any love songs from you. Was this due to a change in your personal life? Are the rumours true? Have you found love? If so, would you be willing to share how you met them?”

“The rumours are, in fact, true, Lee. I have found love during my stay in Hogsmeade, at The Victory festival in 2005,” she took a deep breath and hoped that the audience didn’t notice it. As happy as she was that she had gone through with it, Hogsmeade and Hogwarts had not been easy places to be in those three days.

Seeming to have noticed, Lee gave her an understanding smile and said “Lavender will tell us more about it after the music; this is ‘Coming Home to You.”

> Thought love was just for others,  
>  Thought I would never feel free,  
>  Even when I saw it with my brothers,  
>  Thought it was no longer for me  
>  But then I heard your soothing voice,  
>  and I crossed the bridge of your smile,  
>  back to where a relationship was a choice;  
>  For this I’d go the millionth mile.

  
**May 1, 2005**

_Lavender sat in her room at the Three Broomsticks feeling depressed. Why had she accepted to sing at the Hogsmeade Victory festival? The boys could hardly understand her, they had both been bitten in the wilderness, not in their school during a battle. Neither in Italy nor in Greece had been a real war going on when they were bitten. Jorgos was triggered by mountain landscapes, and Vito was triggered by lonely places in forests, but both of them were rather fine around lots of people, and for full moon they would drink their Wolfsbane Potion and cuddle up on a mattress in their cellar and their inner wolves would be at peace because their mate was always around, as they were a couple._

_She didn’t want to diminish the validity of their traumata, but neither of them had gone through trauma in a place they had considered their second home for years._

_And they had each other. In the Damocles Belby Ward at San Callisto Hospital they had shared a room and fallen in love with each other, while Lavender had never met anyone after the bite for whom she could develop feelings beyond friendship._

_Today she felt like a fraud, having written all those songs of prevailing and hope in the face of dire adversity, but inside just feeling empty and completely lonely. She knew that Lycanthropy didn’t necessarily mean loneliness, Vito and Jorgos had each other, and Professor Lupin had had Sirius Black in his life, and after Sirius Black’s death he had fathered a son with Nymphadora Tonks, but Lavender’s love life had died even before it had begun properly, the day Fenrir Greyback had attacked her._

_She didn’t count Ron Weasley as part of her love life, it had been rather faking a love she didn’t feel, just finding the ginger boy nicer than most boys, and taking the lovey-dovey behavior further than others just because she didn’t know how much of it was enough to make it look real. But her eyes had enjoyed looking at Parvati’s feminine form far more than anything Ron had to offer._

_She had been oblivious then, oblivious until one Hogsmeade weekend before the death of Dumbledore. But that day, she had stood in front of the Three Broomsticks with Parvati and noticed that her friend was nervous._

_“Lavender, I – I think, I’m bisexual,” Parvati had finally said, looking at the floor._

_Lavender had placed a hand on her friend’s arm reassuringly, but it had felt so intense, more intense than anything she had ever felt. She had longed to pull her into an embrace and snog her senseless, but she knew, if Parvati had a crush on a girl, it could be any girl, maybe it was Hermione with her cleverness, or Katie Bell, it could even be that beautiful Slytherin girl Daphne Greengrass for all she knew, why would it be a plus-sized girl like her?_

_“Oi, Pav, Lav, why are you standing outside, we are discussing a bet about Harry and the Ferret,” Seamus had shouted from the door of the Three Broomsticks, and the moment had been lost._

_Trying to distract herself from those sad memories, she opened the bedside cabinet. Her manager always kept it stocked with newspapers, books, crossword puzzles and her PTSD emergency kit._

_Step one of the Mental health emergency plan: Read something. She looked at the headline of the Daily Prophet. “Harry Potter engaged to Draco Malfoy” It didn’t surprise her at all. Parvati had believed that one day they would get married before divining it in Xylomancy. And again, it was something that brought back memories._

_That didn’t help one bit. What books did Kim put there? “Hogwarts: A History”! Really? If I wanted to read bloody “Hogwarts: A History”, I could have employed Hermione as my manager. Jane Austen? Are you kidding me? Books on love and relationships? For a woman who won’t ever be loved? “Sanskrit Charms and Why We Should Know Them” by Padma Patil. When things get really bad, count on people like Kim to know nothing about it and make things so much worse._

_She tried solving a crossword puzzle (step two), but again, the first thing she saw was “Indian garment for women”, Sari._

_Why was everything here related to Parvati Patil? And why couldn’t she get over a love that was probably one-sided? Why had her longing for a love life chosen exactly this stay at Hogsmeade to resurface after being gone since the Battle?_

_She tried to calm herself with step three, kneading the spiky massage ball from the muggle health shop, tearing therapeutic putty apart, smelling bergamote oil and then she even tried her hardest “back to here and now” skill: she bit into a fresh chili pepper. The hot sensation in her mouth only helped her for a few seconds, until her mind supplied the information that Parvati had always carried chili powder with her, saying that lots of English food was bland._

> _Every road here leads me back to your memory_  
>  Every step was already taken by you and me  
>  Every second ticks away so slow  
>  Why did he force me to go? 

_She scribbled the lines down on a piece of paper but knew she would not want to sing them. Her music was meant to make people happy, not sad._

_After what felt like two hours of staring at the wall, she took her spellphone and the paper with the British Wizarding Mental Health Emergency hotline._

  
**December 2005**

“You are listening to The Thursday Pensieve with Lee Jordan on WWN. With me today is Lavender Brown, lead singer of The Glamours. Lavender, until your new album Going Back Home, you never sang about love and said in interviews that love was not a topic for you,” Lee said with his smooth baritone voice.

“You know, I was a student in my last year when the Battle of Hogwarts happened, there was a time in my Hogwarts years when I was seeing a boy, but I exaggerated all relationship clichés, because I wanted to be normal and fancy him, I think I was acting quite silly, and he didn’t really fancy me all that much, I think I was rather a surrogate for someone he thought was completely out of his league. Well, in the end they got together. My real feelings were for my best friend. But with the war going on, we never talked about it, although she once told me she was bisexual,” she took a deep breath, bracing herself for the painful part of her story.

“We have a caller. Hello.”

“Hello, this is Marianne Fletcher. Did the girl you fancied survive the war? And the question I actually called to ask. Why are you against the use of the word ‘werewolf’?” The voice sounded old, but obviously the woman was open-minded enough to be interested in Lavender’s love story.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll answer your second question first. I find it okay, if some Lycanthropy patients call themselves ‘werewolf’ but for me in times of available Wolfsbane Potion, the word feels too stigmatizing. Lycanthropy is a disease, not a reason to demonize somebody. And – whether atypic lycanthropy like mine or Type one lycanthropy like Jorgos and Vito’s - we are not dark creatures but people with a disease. And what we need to fight lycanthropy is not discrimination against us, but easy accessibility to Wolfsbane Potion, towards which the Remus Lupin Foundation has taken huge steps, and adequate funding for research on remedies against Lycanthropy. I believe that whether we can find a complete remedy in my lifetime depends on the funding for the research,” this topic was easier to talk about than personal matters, but she took a deep breath and continued.

“And now to your first question. After the Battle, it had not been certain if I would survive. My parents took me to San Callisto’s Hospital in Rome, which has a complete ward dedicated to Lycanthropy. It took a full month until I was stable, and about a year until I was well enough to leave the hospital. I had not heard from anyone of my friends and former teachers, except for Professor Trelawney and Headmistress McGonagall. I asked my mother, and she told me, that my friend whom I fancied was not among the obituaries. In San Callisto’s I met Jorgos and Vito. We founded our band there. The first song we wrote and performed together was ‘Still Alive’.” Lavender saw Lee’s questioning look and mouthed: “Pause.”

“And here it is for you: Still Alive by The Glamours.” Lee moved his wand in a wordless charm, and heartbeat-like drum solo of the intro started.

  
**May 1, 2005**

_Lavender dialed the number of the Emergency Hotline. A woman’s voice answered: “Wizarding Crisis Hotline, how can I help you?”_

_All crisis hotline voices sounded the same, distinguishable only as male or female voice, and she had read somewhere that if a nonbinary person worked for an emergency hotline, their voice would randomly be modulated into one of them with every new call. And she had also read that the Mind Healer on the other side of the line would hear a standard voice, too only revealing the gender of the caller._

_“I was abroad for a long time after being severely injured during the Battle of Hogwarts. Now I came back to Hogsmeade for the first time since, and everything is full of the memories of the girl I fancied in those days. It was long ago, but I never met anyone who meant to me what she did. I took back a lot of things that the war and Fenrir Greyback had taken from me, constant Mind Healing and my band have helped me with that, but…”_

_Lavender heard a gasp on the other end of the spellphone line. “Lav, is that you?”_

_“Well, yes, it’s me,” Lavender considered cutting the connection, not wanting to talk to a fan, but she remembered that apart from very few friends back in Hogwarts nobody called her Lav._

_“It’s me, Parvati.”_

_Lavender held the phone at arm’s length and squealed._

_“Parvati!”_

_“I must give your call to a colleague if you want to continue to talk about your problem, but if you want, we could meet when my shift is over. Where are you staying?”_

_“I stay at the Three Broomsticks. At the stairs to the hotel rooms there is a picture of woman with a kneazle. The Password to my room is ‘Renee de la Claire’. When is your shift over?”_

_“Between one and 2 hours from now, I take one more call, and pensieve my end-of-shift report, then I can Floo directly to the Three Broomsticks. See you then, Lav. I’m looking forward to it.”_

_Before she knew what was happening, a wizard was on the line. She explained to him that hearing her old friend again had been exactly what she had needed to feel better, and that she could cope with the rest of her issues until her next appointment with her mind healer. The man cast a safety alarm charm on her and wished her a good evening._

_She showered with her special occasions shower gel, took her time to choose an outfit and got dressed. Not one minute after she was ready, she heard a knock at the door._

_“Come in.” She tried to look relaxed sitting in one of the two armchairs in her suite._

_Parvati entered the room wearing muggle jeans and a pastel orange t-shirt with the words “Love potion is NOT consent” Circe’s tits! She had grown even more beautiful! Lavender had to pull herself together not to ogle._

_“Hello, Lav, you’re looking good.”_

_Lavender got up, and Parvati pulled her into a hug that lasted quite long and yet far too short._

  
**December 2005**

“We have another caller. Hello.” Lee’s voice brought her back from her thoughts.

“This is Bill. Lavender, I’m proud of you. I have atypic Lycanthropy myself, and your activism has helped me so much. I wish you happiness with your love. I myself am happily married. The atypic Lycanthropy changed nothing for my then fiancée now wife. She loves me as I am, and you also deserve to be loved as you are.”

“Thank you so much, Bill. I think we are happy with each other. Last May, Jorgos, Vito and I performed at the Victory Festival, and I saw her again. The girl from my school days. She had grown into an even more beautiful woman. We talked for days on end, and it was as if we had never been apart in the first place. We were immediately as close to each other again. She had become a mindhealer, and I called the crisis hotline when I felt too lonely.” Lavender felt the butterflies inside when she thought of her first talk with Parvati on first of May.

Lee and Bill asked some activism questions she answered automatically, while her thoughts strayed to the past.

  
**May 28, 2005**

_Lavender had changed her plans, taking her songwriting break in Parvati’s semi-detached house at Totnes. The two women spent every free minute together, and Padma already joked that Lavender must have moved in with Parvati, giving both of them quizzical looks. Lavender still wasn’t used to Parvati’s breathtaking beauty, at least in her eyes Parvati was the most beautiful woman ever._

_They sat comfortably on a bench in the garden, hidden from the neighbors’ looks, when Lavender noticed Parvati was a bit nervous._

_“Everything okay, Pav?”_

_“Could you – could you show me how you look without glamours?” Parvati almost whispered._

_This was it. How would Parvati love her if she saw how destroyed her face looked? But was there really an alternative? She heard her mindhealer’s voice in her mind ‘Postponing the truth will not make things better. Face it immediately when it comes to the surface.’ “I’m frightened,” Lavender admitted, and Parvati took her left hand._

_Lavender cast a Finite Incantatem on her face and couldn’t hold back the tears._

_Stroking across Lavender’s hand with her thumb, Parvati said softly: “You are still beautiful. And I still wish you were my girlfriend.”_

_“Really? Despite my scar, and the fact that I eat raw meat every new moon?” Lavender exclaimed incredulously._

_“Lav, I may have had some flings in the time we were apart, but you were my only love. The day I told you I was bisexual, I wanted to tell you I fancied you. And those feelings have returned full force the moment I saw you again._

_“If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up. Pav, I fancy you, too, perhaps I even love you.”_

_Parvati pulled her into a kiss, and it was the best feeling she had ever had. Only in the next morning, waking up beside Parvati after a night of snogging and talking and snogging again until they were too tired to go on, Lavender noticed she hadn’t put the glamours back on. Even around her parents she would usually wear them 24/7._

  
**December 2005**

“Time for another song. Lavender, you brought us a very special song, it’s a premiere. Do you want to announce it?”

“This song will come out as a single next week; I just couldn’t wait to release it with my next album coming out next year. I wrote it for Parvati Patil, my love. It’s called ‘Grow Old With Me.”


End file.
